“What I would argue strongly is don’t quit before we start,” said Shumlin. “Don’t quit before we start.”

I guess it’s OK to quit after you start, if you’ve got the steely backbone of a Peter Shumlin.

But, since he’s decided to become Sir-Quits-A-Lot, Peter’s now going to be laying out his laurels for all Vermonters (and potential future US Senate voters) to coo over, lovingly, while he puts his feet up in his office as a short-timer, and tells us “we” have a lot left to do:

“Now we have a lot left to do; let’s get back to work,” he said, according to the Free Press.

those two same date ranges increased by 150, from 14,300 to 14,450, but the unemployment rate stayed the same – because the number of people who dropped out of the labor force exceeded the number who became unemployed.

Why is it you find dockworkers located near docks? That’s where the work is. If there were more work available in Vermont, you would see the demand for data infrastructure increase, and it would already have been built out in those areas where the demand is. That the smallest ends of the demand curve for internet access sit on the last few miles of Vermont roads, out in the sticks, does not mean that providing data to those locations will salve the economic wounds inflicted by decades of anti-business deeds, and rhetoric.

GMOs: Just a quick note to politicians: Every foodstuff is genetically modified. That there are newer ways of doing this does not erase millenia of modifications, it just makes those changes occur faster. Labeling on the package isn’t going to change anything, in the same way that labeling cigarettes as being dangerous to your health doesn’t change the fact that smokers will buy them.

This is an accomplishment? It’s like saying labeling the weight of the package in the product is an accomplishment.

Minimum Wage: As has been repeatedly and tiresomely noted, raising the minimum wage increases unemployment. The CBO estimated that an increase to $10.10 would decrease employment by 500,000 workers nationally. Again, this is an accomplishment? Raising the cost of anything involving the production of a good or a service means the price goes up, which means (generally) that demand for that product or service will go down. Which means that there will be less demand, or need, for the labor to provide that product or service.

Offering “free” meals in schools: Maybe Peter needs to go back to school himself, because TANSTAAFL says otherwise. Touting something as free does not make it so; those meals are paid for by tax revenues, not a magically free meal-delivery system. Oh, and how are those meals looking, by the way?

But what’s really driving Peter’s self-imposed exile is the massive and unmitigated failure of single-payer, his “signature” piece of legislation. A failure so large that Peter decided he would only detail how big the failure is until after his last election in November 2014, an election that was so close it had to get tossed to the Vermont legislature to decide.

Shumlin had missed two earlier financing deadlines but finally released his proposal. But he immediately cast it as “detrimental to Vermonters.” The model called for businesses to take on a double-digit payroll tax, while individuals would face up to a 9.5 percent premium assessment. Big businesses, in particular, didn’t want to pay for Shumlin’s plan while maintaining their own employee health plans.

“These are simply not tax rates that I can responsibly support or urge the Legislature to pass,” the governor said. “In my judgment, the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families and the state’s economy.”

Note that implementing single-payer would not guarantee any additional access to care. It would just give everyone an insurance card. There’s an enormous difference between covering everyone under one insurance plan, or even 50 plans, and the insured actually being able to see a doctor. Ask Canadians.

And that was for a plan that would not be truly single payer. Large companies with self-insured plans regulated by ERISA would have been exempt. And Medicare also would have operated separately, unless the state got a waiver, which was a long shot.

Again, since the state’s demographics mean that MediCare spending gobbles up massive chunks of the state’s budget, it also means that single-payer wouldn’t address the primary cause for commercial insurance rate increases – the Medicare cost-shift. His proposal ignores it entirely.

In short, even Peter can read the writing on the wall. Considering his near-defeat last fall, even in a state as politically progressive as Vermont’s, another Shumlin term was rapidly becoming a pipe dream for the Man With A Questionable Plan from Putney.

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